At 100, Picks picks indie band Yo La Tengo

Spencer Patterson

Friday, May 6, 2005 | 9:33 a.m.

Patterson's Picks hits the century mark today with this 100th edition in the album recommendation series launched two years ago.

To commemorate the occasion, I'm featuring the band I've probably listened to more -- and seen more often in concert -- than any other over the past decade: Yo La Tengo.

If you've never heard of them, odds are you don't spin a lot of indie rock. The Hoboken, N.J.-based outfit has been recording and touring for around 20 years, and remains one of the few survivors from the scene's mid-1990s heyday.

Longtime label home Matador Records released Yo La Tengo's first best-of set, titled "Prisoners of Love," in March. Solid as that collection of songs is, however, I feel strongly that this band should first be experienced as nature intended -- through its stack of proper albums.

Several of the trio's discs make excellent starting points, including a two-fer pairing of 1987's "New Wave Hot Dogs" with 1989's "President Yo La Tengo" EP and 1997's "I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One," generally considered the group's best LP.

My pick is 1995's "Electr-O-Pura." It houses many of the best tunes in the band's live repertoire, along with several great cuts rarely heard anywhere else.

In liner notes written on the back cover, frontman Ira Kaplan offers, "Patterns of sound are my bag right now." It's an apt description of many of the album's top cuts, songs built on layers of fuzzy instrumentation swelling toward dramatic conclusions.

Chief among those tracks is closer "Blue Line Swinger," one of Yo La Tengo's quintessential numbers. The nine-minute piece gradually picks up tempo behind the powerful drumming of Georgia Hubley (Kaplan's wife), before exploding into a climactic finish highlighted by Hubley's haunting vocals and Kaplan's noisy guitar work.

"My Heart's Reflection" is another feedback-soaked classic, with Kaplan's vulnerable vocals and James McNew's bouncing basslines offset by more (barely) controlled mayhem from Kaplan.

"Electr-O-Pura" also shows off Yo La Tengo's sweeter side. The effervescent "Pablo and Andrea" glides along gracefully, while ballads "The Hour Grows Late" and "Don't Say a Word" provide salient, mellow moments among the surrounding maelstrom.

If feedback normally isn't your thing, don't be scared off. My wife, who likes Fleetwood Mac and Bruce Springsteen, listens to Yo La Tengo.

Not that she has much choice.

Artist: Yo La Tengo.

Title: "Electr-O-Pura."

Year of release: 1995 (Matador Records).

Tracklisting: "Decora," "Flying Lesson (Hot Chicken #1)," "The Hour Grows Late," "Tom Courtenay," "False Ending," "Pablo and Andrea," "Paul Is Dead," "False Alarm," "The Ballad of Red Buckets," "Don't Say a Word (Hot Chicken #2)," "(Straight Down to the) Bitter End," "My Heart's Reflection," "Attack on Love," "Blue Line Swinger."